New London — The city is poised to start collecting on-street parking fees through a permit program aimed mostly at Electric Boat employees in the Fort Trumbull area.

The program has the potential to generate more than $200,000 a year if the city sells permits for the 250 to 300 parking spots that were marked out around the area by the city earlier this year.

Parking Authority Chairman Kip Bochain said the city is in the process of signing people up at a monthly rate of $60. Individual employees, not EB, are paying the monthly fee, he said.

EB has needed more parking than what is available in its parking garage on Pequot Avenue since it moved its engineers and designers into the former Pfizer Global Research and Development Headquarters in 2010.

Electric Boat now has about 3,500 employees working in the city, hundreds more than the number of people who worked at Pfizer.

In addition to the garage, EB pays for about 120 spots in the city’s Water Street parking garage and operates a shuttle from the garage and parking lots in Groton.

Combined with a recently implemented permit program to alleviate parking issues in the residential neighborhoods surrounding Fort Trumbull, the parking program in Fort Trumbull has helped to alleviate some of the haphazard parking in the area, Bochain said.

He called the programs a success so far but not a permanent solution since future developments in Fort Trumbull likely will eat away at the number of spots available.

“At some point there is going to be a parking garage down there,” Bochain said.

While there has been talk for years about the idea of a mixed use parking garage, the idea has yet to come to fruition.

Bochain said he is in favor of the idea — as long as the city is not footing the bill — and he thinks taxpayers feel the same way.

The city’s development arm, the Renaissance City Development Association, has said it is negotiating with EB and a developer to make a parking garage a reality.

“Something’s going to eventually happen down there,” Bochain said.

Mayor Michael Passero, who said he shares Bochain’s optimism about future development in Fort Trumbull, said while the city will realize revenue from the new permit parking program, revenue was not the primary goal.

With Parking Director Carey Redd taking the lead, Passero said the city is developing plans to solve the long-term parking issues citywide.

By most accounts that solution will include meters regulating on-street parking in the downtown area. The questions remains where and when the meters will be installed.

“What we’re hearing from the community is we want better parking management,” Passero said. “Better parking management will enhance the experience for visitors in New London. We don’t want visitors aggravated.”

He said Redd and the parking authority are actively analyzing the parking challenges in the different neighborhoods and districts in the city.

Redd, he said, is helping to provide a detailed and systematic approach “to solve problems that have existed for years or decades.”

“He’s got a very difficult job but everywhere that I’ve needed him to go to work out issues, constituents come back with glowing reports. The complaints are from people that want us to move faster," Passero said. "I’d rather get it right."

g.smith@theday.com